profile: [17] The -file of profile is etymologically a ‘thread’. The word comes from early modern Italian profilo, a derivative of profilare ‘draw in outline’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix pro- ‘forward’ and filare, which used to mean ‘draw a line’; and this in turn went back to Latin filāre ‘spin’, a derivative of filum ‘thread’ (from which English gets file for storing things in). => file
